Larry Summers: "This is Bullshit."
As his senior staffers were telling him that he needed to apologize for his women-in-science remarks last February, Larry Summers dug in his heels and sneered, "This is bullshit," according to Zachary M. Seward in the Crimson.
Seward's piece is a fascinating tick-tock of the internal deliberations on how to handle the burgeoning controversy over Summers' indelicate speech.
Summers used the word "bullshit" in various conversations with people both inside and outside of Mass Hall. He also told diners at at least two dinner parties that the episode "has not increased my faith in humanity."
Seward's reportage reinforces a report in the New York Observer last year to the effect that a tipsy Summers had told a reporter at an after-party for the White House Correspondents' Dinner that he wasn't going to be bothered by "whiny professors."
I'm not surprised that Summers didn't want to apologize, nor am I surprised by his insults of the faculty and his crude language. I reported both in Harvard Rules (although I got the feeling that some readers found the truth hard to believe). I remember Summers referring to Zayed Yasin, the 2002 commencement speaker, as "the little shit."
What strikes me is the vast gap between the Larry Summers who likes to gladhand with students at a freshman dance and the (more true?) character who refers to them as "shit" in private, or insults his professors in equally crude ways.
Will the real Larry Summers please stand up?
